Charles Kaiser on Barack Obama's stunning Iowa victory

Millennial Power in Iowa

"The answer is to rely on youth—not a time of life, but a state of mind: a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity." Robert F. Kennedy, Cape Town, June 6, 1966

"It's at that age where you really feel you can make a change—in your twenties or so—when you really feel you can make things happen. Things matter." Bob Dylan to Charles Kaiser, New York City, November 13, 1985

"Years from now, you'll look back and you'll say that this was the moment—this was the place—where America remembered what it means to hope." Barack Obama, Des Moines, January 3, 2008

Last week's news was all about the power of youth, and the lovely possibility that the Millennials and the Xers might rise up together to throw the baby boomers out of the White House forever.

By turning out in extraordinary numbers, the 17- to 29-year-old crowd helped bump up the total of first-time caucus goers in Iowa to an astonishing 57 percent of those voting. Then the under-29ers gave 57 percent of their votes to Barack Obama, propelling him to victory. Thanks to the genuine color-blindness of these young voters, this was probably the first time in American history when preelection polls did not exaggerate the support for a black American running for high office.

Suddenly you could feel the spirit that has been missing from American politics ever since Gene McCarthy entered the New Hampshire primary in 1968 to try to bring an end to the War in Vietnam. "It was simply wonderful," said Mary McGrory, the great Washington columnist, describing that fateful New Hampshire contest 40 years ago. "It had emotion, it had intellectual content, it had the unexpected, and it was surprising. It was a little glimpse of Athens."

Last Thursday, that spirit was reborn in Des Moines. Obama's victory speech was one of the electrifying moments in the history of American politics. In less than 14 minutes, he managed to evoke the best of John Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. (One reason he may have sounded so much like Kennedy: a possible contribution from veteran JFK speechwriter Ted Sorensen.) The expectations for this speech were enormous; somehow, Obama managed to exceed all of them. He confirmed the reaction of many of us when he addressed the Democratic National Convention in Boston three-and-a-half years ago: Obama is the great natural politician of his generation. That was one of many reasons my father, Phil Kaiser, was already supporting Obama over Clinton last spring.

In the Times last Saturday, Michael Powell caught the wind in Obama's sails as he seemed to be taking New Hampshire by storm. On Sunday, Bob Schieffer captured the overnight desperation of the Clinton campaign with an anecdote he offered at the end of Face the Nation. Trying to make the "experience is essential" argument, a Hillary aide told a CBS staffer to go back and look at Bill Clinton's first two years in office: "It was just a disaster." By the end of the weekend, it looked like the Democratic primary was turning into a rout: a Gallup/USA Today poll gave Obama 41 percent, Clinton, 28, and Edwards, 19.


Welcome to the magical world of the Nation's Capital, where 57 percent of the population is black, 52.5 percent are women, 5 percent are gay—but just about everybody is straight, white, and male on Sunday TV chat shows.

Box Score
Cumulative totals for 10 weeks in a row

	Meet the Press (NBC–Russert)	Face the Nation (CBS–Schieffer)	This Week (ABC–Stephanopoulos)
White Men	82	35	110
White Women	14	13	26
Black Men	8	7	8
Black Women	4	2	9
Asian Women	1	1	2
Gay People	0	0	4*

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Tomorrow: Winners & Sinners 2007, a look back at the year's best and worst journalism, books, movies, and torture.

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Charles Kaiser is the author of The Gay Metropolis and 1968 in America. He has been media editor for Newsweek, a member of the metro staff of the New York Times, and a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where he covered the press and book publishing. To learn more, visit charleskaiser.com.